The weekly wrap is where TLNT shares the stories that didn’t quite make it into a full post this week. We’ll also share links to some of our favorite things we read this week about HR, people development, the future of work, and more.
Hiring is difficult for many organizations, especially in a very competitive retail environment. So, beauty retailer The Body Shop is doing something in their retail stores that they piloted in their distribution center at the end of last year: First-come, first-served hiring. Andrea Blieden, general manager of U.S. operations of The Body Shop, explains it to Fast Company in a story that ran this week:
“We’re not asking for your background check. We’re not asking for you to be drug screened. And there’s only three questions to get a job. It’s, ‘Are you authorized to work in the U.S.? Can you stand for up to eight hours? And can you lift over 50 pounds?’”
This approach isn’t completely new. Greyston Bakery popularized and even put together case studies around what they call Open Hiring. The case that Greyston and The Body Shop make is simple: The barriers that many organizations put up when hiring employees harm their business and hurt disadvantaged groups often excluded from employment opportunities. Removing those barriers is credited with decreasing attrition at The Body Shop’s distribution center and reducing the number of temp agencies they had to deal with to one.
With the emphasis on creating more inclusive workplaces, Open Hiring may seem like a logical (albeit radical to some) extension of a march to this end. It also shows that some of the most exciting approaches to creating advantages in hiring are happening outside of Silicon Valley and without the aid of technology.
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (Jolts) found that job openings fell 8% in December to approximately 6.4 million jobs, the lowest level in nearly two years and down significantly from record highs just a year ago.
Just last week, the Labor Department released information that showed employers adding 225,000 jobs in January. Not exactly the end of the world quite yet, given the average number of jobs has stayed relatively consistent over the past three months.
Economists cited by Barron’s credit an economy that has slowed a little from a year ago as the primary culprit. “While we hear a lot about the difficulty in finding qualified employees in a tight labor market,” Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at Bleakley Advisory Group told Barron’s, “it’s clear here that with a 2%-type GDP economy rather than something near 3% has resulted in a lesser demand for labor.”
I know some people are out there waiting for the shoe to drop on another 2008-type of recession, but the employment indicators simply aren’t showing anything close to that. At least, not yet. We’ll keep an eye on it, of course.
In new research from Checkster, 78% of candidates copped to lying or exaggerating on their resume. The more surprising part? Two-thirds of hiring managers don’t care. The lie that hiring managers were least tolerant of is fake references (44% said they would never hire anyone who gave a fake). The lie hiring manager care least about? 92% say they would look past a candidate exaggerating their GPA by more than a half-point.
“While these high levels of applicant misrepresentation are shocking, what’s even more disturbing is that most companies do not weed out these fraudulent applicants during the hiring process,” said Yves Lermusi, CEO, Checkster in a statement that accompanied the report.
The report is fascinating on many levels, much of it due to the high number of hiring leaders willing to overlook lies, exaggerations, and misstatements by potential employees almost across the board. The through-line to me, especially when you look at the differences, comes down to relevance. It might not be a mainstream point of view in recruiting and HR, but for many in hiring roles, some of these violations simply don’t matter as much. Should it be any surprise that hiring managers are willing to look past information that is less than relevant to them, even in spite of any possible ethical violations? Does the pressure to put together an acceptable looking professional presence push candidates to fib about an employment gap ten years ago that shouldn’t matter — but often does?
I won’t be the guy who says, “Go ahead, lie on that resume.” But I will call out the many preposterous ways recruiters and HR professionals use to disqualify a candidate (employment gaps, bogus GPA requirements, job requirements that are more exhaustive than useful, detailed background checks that are simply a CYA exercise). We can hold candidates to a higher standard and fix the ways we evaluate and qualify suitability for roles.